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How about that notice from [[Main/PeterThoeny]]? Why don't we change the [[WebPreferences]] for the Hurd web to say "Copyright (c) 2002 Free Software Foundation", instead of the usual "... the contributing authors". I think that would make the information we put in here easier to move around among different webs (not only Wikified ones...). Perhaps also add a notice on licensing? Like this:

    "Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
     59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111,  USA

     Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
     permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved."

    Submitting material to the Hurd Wiki not only assigns the copyrights
    to the Free Software Foundation it also put the material itself under
    the GNU FDL, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

-- [[Main/JoachimNilsson]] - 14 May 2002

Don't do this - the material will not be assigned to the FSF until every contributor signed a paper form and filed it with the FSF.

So simply claiming something is (C) FSF will not make it to be so, and it will not only have no effect, but also be confusing.

Wiki has authentication, this is good. However, unless you have paper forms, all contributions remain with the original author.

And if you had papers, you would have to disallow or moderate guest account contributions and either filter them out or change the copyright notice when they are filled in. This makes reusing Wiki-evolved content in free software projects by the FSF difficult btw, so don't expect major wiki-evolved content to be included in FSF manuals or so (this is not a problem, as long as everyone is aware of this limitation and keeps it in mind).

-- Marcus Brinkmann (no, not a Wiki-Name :)

So what you are saying is basically this:

1. We cannot assign the copyright to the FSF without the _paper_ work.
2. We _can_ use content from the FSF (as long as we keep all copyright information, of course), but any content evolved from this is unusable for GNU manuals.
3. Even if every newly registered user (and [[Main/TWikiGuest]] is disabled completely for the Hurd Web) agrees to our terms that agreement is useless without the _paper_ work.

I must admit I was completely clueless about this. This makes me start thinking about a lot of code I've written where I've assigned the copyright to the FSF, then that code is useless too. Man, have I been naive...

I have to take a moment to think about this. I've never thought about things in this way. When I do commercial work I've of course already signed my contract -- and that's a piece of paper. But I thought that electronic consent could be okey as well ... ouch, that hurd^Ht.

Oh, there is of course all the RCS diffs ... would that help, if we would like to have the Wiki content in GNU manuals?

-- [[Main/JoachimNilsson]] - 14 May 2002

If you have papers signed by the contributors, then any Guest added words (less than 10 lines?) can be filtered out of the Wiki using RCS. This is acceptable for GNU code, if I recall correctly. You may have to re-writen certain portions of the Wiki to use FSF contributed work only, though.

-- [[Main/SimonLaw]] - 16 May 2002

Moved this thread to here from [[HurdTWikiDiscuss]].

-- [[Main/JoachimNilsson]] - 16 May 2002